“Great art is horseshit. Buy tacos.” – Charles Bukowski

Lean back. Breathe in. You’re not dead. Not yet.

This week’s piece of advice comes from a short animatic I wrote for a games project last year. It’s a gigantic love letter to Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, the works of H.P. Lovecraft and a few other things I think are cool. The quote itself is heavily inspired from Hemingway. Watch it here if you’re at all interested.

“Regret nothing. Until it is too late. Then regret everything.” – Cecil Baldwin

I’m a really big fan of this quote. It’s got a slightly eerie vibe to it, but it can easily be contextualised differently. Anyone who says they live with no regrets is full of shit. Everyone lives with regrets. Something you didn’t say, something you didn’t do, something you left until it was too late. Because we never regret something until the time to change it has passed us. We choose to do anything because we believe it to be right, but more often than not, we are wrong. We are made of our mistakes, and of our choice as to whether or not we repeat them. Living with regrets is a good thing. At the end of it all, those one or two good choices you made will define, and more importantly, outweigh every bad one.

Note: I want to talk quickly about where this quote came from, so consider this a Thematic Shift Notifier.

The golden rule of horror is that something is scarier the less you see of it. H.P. Lovecraft knew this when he wrote his books, and it’s why people keep coming back to it for inspiration even after the countless contemporary attempts at giving us the heebie jeebies. His horror was built on the idea that human understanding is laughably limited, and that there are things out there so indescribable, so unfathomable, that the very sight of them would drive us insane. It’s genius: you’re so much better at thinking up a boogeyman than Lovecraft ever could be, so fuck it. What you’re imagining is what it is.

He’s one of my biggest inspirations, and it’s pretty obvious he is to Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor with their podcast, Welcome to Night Vale. What they do with their twice-monthly upload is pose this question: What if H.P. Lovecraft’s horror was contained to a rural American town, and what if the citizens had learned to make it part of their daily routine? The mundaneness and banality of every day life is regularly thrown together with crippling, despair-filled terror in very scary and often very funny ways. Delivered each episode by disc jockey Cecil Baldwin, he acts as both willing citizen and despondent prisoner to Night Vale and its ways. He swoons over outsider scientist Carlos, oblivious to his claims that time is slowing down and not a single clock in Night Vale actually exists, and accepts the possibility of his death as the unseen, tentacle-waving black masses known as management stalk him through the radio station to renegotiate his contract. An omniscient glowing cloud begins passing through town, controlling the minds of the people and sporadically dropping animals which are already dead, making Animal Control’s job a lot easier, and Street Cleaning Day is a day they’ve been preparing for but never saw coming in which they must board up their doors and windows, cower in a corner and block their ears. There’s a street party if you don’t die. It’s a brilliantly written series that you should absolutely check out. The episode that this week’s quote comes from can be listened to here.

Disneyland isn’t the happiest place in the world. It’s just the least unhappy.

Always be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.

You can’t breathe happy air with grumpy gills.

I got some good news yesterday. The two people I love more than anyone in this world, who love each other more than anyone in this world, are having a baby. These two people, and the network of friends that surrounded us, were an integral part of most of the best, worst, funniest, saddest, unbelievably fucked up parts of my life. Though some of us have fallen away from each other in time – some because they were cunts, some because I was a cunt, some simply because of time – the memories I have with them transcend all of that. They’re timeless, because we, in those moments, were timeless also.

Every close-knit group of friends develop a series of in-jokes: those hilarious as fuck quips to them, bizarre and horribly unfunny jumbled words to everyone else. As the immortal Michael Scott once said, “I love inside jokes. I’d love to be a part of one someday.” We had no shortage of these, but there’s one that seemed to transcend all layers of understanding, one that people immediately understood with zero context (well, technically there’s two, but I can’t tell the story behind ‘wimp womp’). I don’t know who came up with it, apart from the fact that it wasn’t me, but it became our motto. We even developed a sign for it: flap your hands like gills around your neck to make me a lot fucking grumpier than I already am, kids!

I know it sounds narcissistic, but I’m hoping this post exists as a sort of tribute to these sorts of friends. They’re lifeblood to me, as I’m sure yours are to you. Let this piece of everyday advice stand as testament to you and your friends’ ability to be the most bulletproof, handsome motherfuckers out there.

If you feel sick just be sick. If you love someone just tell them. – Chris (Simpsons artist)

If you don’t know Chris (Simpsons artist), you should fix that now. I’m not going to talk about the technical proficiency of his work or whether I think he’s for real or not. None of that really matters to me, or to his artistic integrity. Regardless of what you think about his drawing abilities, this dude does what I’m doing here better than I ever will. He summed up the entire Kony 2012 debacle on both sides with one small sentence: “I am rubbish at being a person.” He described Eurovision as “the one night of the year when everyone watches the television together and laughs at other countries for being poor”. But hands-down my favourite piece of writing from him is the little piece of genius I’ve chosen for this week.

In terms of its resonance with me, I think it largely speaks for itself. If something’s affecting you that strongly that you’re unable to think about anything else, just deal with it. Stop hiding or running away from it, and face it head on. Here’s the dirty little secret about this project, though: I’m the worst at following my own advice. It’s one thing to look at a quote and say “…Wow. Yeah, that means so much to me.” and another thing entirely to let it change you for the better. So many problems, conflicts and relationships in my life would have been solved or at least ended better if I could have just faced my issues and insecurities head-on and been honest about them. There’s that word: honesty. Don’t think you can keep running from your problems, even if you’re not going to stop. At the very least, be honest with yourself. If you feel sick, just be sick. If you love someone, just tell them.

Don’t be a cunt.

Don’t be racist. Don’t be homophobic. Don’t be xenophobic. Don’t be jingoistic. Don’t be a religious fuckwit and force your enlightened understanding of existence down the throat of anyone who has the gall to believe otherwise, however euphonious you think it is to hear. Don’t be a non-religious fuckwit and force your enlightened understanding of existence down the throat of anyone who has the gall to believe otherwise, however euphonious you think it is to hear. Don’t use big words and long sentences to sound clever. Don’t hit women, if you’re a man. Don’t hit men, if you’re a woman. Don’t hit women, if you’re a woman. Don’t hit men, if you’re a man. Don’t hit your kids. Don’t let them be running-rampant little shits in public. Don’t do 10 below the speed limit in the far right lane of the highway. Don’t be dishonest. Don’t run away from your problems. Don’t blame someone else’s problems for your own if you can’t run. Don’t spend ten minutes in a restaurant line, get to the counter and say, “Hmmm…”. Don’t complain about your life not going anywhere when you’re not going anywhere. Don’t be a hipster, a goth, an emo, a jock, a slut, a geek or a freak. Don’t ever think that anyone is that easy to categorise. Don’t complain about being too fat when you never get up. Don’t complain about being too skinny when you never get a sandwich. Don’t hate Batman. Don’t think you’re better than someone because you do something they don’t. Don’t be a fucking cunting piece of shit bully. Don’t kill yourself. Don’t think that anything is forever. Don’t take any mind-altering substance if it turns you into a bad person. Don’t fuck kids. Don’t protect those who do. Don’t talk during the movie. Don’t get mad when people talk during the ads. Don’t say you’re afraid of anyone who is doing something that isn’t hurting or isn’t going to hurt you or anyone else; you’re not afraid, you’re a fucking dick. Don’t preach ‘racial tolerance’; someone shouldn’t have to be tolerated because they’re a different race, you petulant fuck. Don’t think that what you think should in any way be what anybody else thinks. Don’t fuck with our dreams.

You want a reason to live? Have a drink of water and get some sleep. Wake up in the morning and try again like everyone else does. – Louis C.K.

Louis C.K. is one of my heroes. There is arguably no greater example of someone being as free artistically as they want to be in today’s entertainment industry than this man. His TV show Louie is so wildly unpredictable, hilarious, tragic, beautiful and brilliant, and one of my favourite episodes is when his friend Eddie comes to visit. Played close to home by comedian Doug Stanhope, early in the episode he very matter-of-factly states that he’s done with life. Louie shrugs it off initially as just his gruff, self-disparaging personality, until he realises he’s talking to someone who is genuinely suicidal. The following is a transcript from that scene:

Eddie: Louie, look me in the eye and tell me I have one good reason to live.

Louie: …no.

Eddie: See, you got nothin’.

Louie: No. No, I’m not – I’m not playin’ that. I’m not doin’ it.

Eddie: Whadda you mean.

Louie: I mean – I mean fuck you, man. I got my reasons to live. I worked hard to figure out what they are; I’m not just handin’ ’em to you. Okay? You want a reason to live? Have a drink of water and get some sleep. Wake up in the morning and try again like everybody else does.

Eddie: Yeah, yeah, yeah: “tough love.”

Louie: Nah, no love. Okay? More like “tough not givin’ a shit anymore,” Eddie. If you wanna – If you wanna tap out ’cause your life is shit… You know what, it’s not your life. It’s life. It’s – life is bigger than you, it’s – if you can imagine that. Life isn’t somethin’ that you possess, it’s somethin’ that you take part in, and you witness.

Eddie: Hahahaha. You are – You are so excited right now, that you get to give the big speech. You would love to be the guy that talks this loser – who you never think about – outta suicide so you can feel better about yourself. This is not about you, Louie. This is just me sayin’ good-bye. It was nice to know ya when I knew ya.

Get in deep. Get hurt. Get drunk. Just don’t forget to get back up.

This is my four-step guide to getting through the end of a relationship. People will tell you to just get over it, but what the fuck do they know? They don’t know the thoughts you keep coming back to, the scenarios you replay over and over in your head. You need time to grieve; you need it. You need time to desperately try and win them back; you need it. You need time to get so drunk the only thing you can do is yell at people about how mizzrrbblleee you are; you really need it. But then, once all of that’s done, you need to start piecing your life back together; you need to.

Without going into too much detail, this does relate to my own life. I spent one night at the local sports club drinking until I could barely move, yelling at my friends about how confused and hurt I was. Fast-forward an hour and a half; my arms were wrapped around a public toilet bowl, I had a friend making gagging noises in my ear and I was violently vomiting the Nachos and beer I’d consumed that evening. Somehow I managed to make it to the car and home without going again. Upon being dropped off however, I got out of the car, took two steps forward, explosively vomited on myself, fell forwards into the garden and stayed there, on my side, vomiting over and over again for about fifteen minutes before I could muster the strength to get up and go inside. The next morning, I felt like I was going to die. But above all of that was the feeling that I had stepped over a line; that I was finally ready to start taking steps to be over this. Actually getting to that point took a little more time, but the important thing is that I got back up. That’s the key; take as much time as you need to get there, but get there.

So, uh, there it is. Get in deep. Get hurt. Get drunk. Just don’t forget to get back up.